Giuliani is calling into Fox News right now to clarify his collusion comments from this morning: "My client didn't do it, and even if he did it, it's not a crime." pic.twitter.com/4Lem500Wuj
— Aidan McLaughlin (@aidnmclaughlin) July 30, 2018
Rudy explains to @swin24 that his odd set of media appearances today were designed to essentially kill a NYT's story https://t.co/6Zqqme48z4
— Sam Stein (@samstein) July 31, 2018
Throughout Monday, President Donald Trump’s lawyer and former New York City mayor Rudy Giuliani went on a chaotic media tour, with each subsequent interview seeming to atone or clean up for a key element laid out in a previous appearance.
In an interview with The Daily Beast on Monday night, Giuliani appeared to blame the maelstrom he kicked up on inquisitive New York Times reporters who he suggested had compelled him to proactively spin a potentially damaging story that may or may not actually be real. Several veterans of the Trump campaign, like much of the viewing public, were left befuddled…
The day began with a morning interview with Fox & Friends, during which Giuliani insisted that “collusion [with Russian election-meddlers] is not a crime” in the first place. He then headed to CNN where he proceeded to, ostensibly, break a bit of news about the infamous Trump Tower meeting that the president’s son took with a Russian lawyer reportedly tied to Kremlin officials.
Two days before that meeting, Giuliani relayed, former Trump attorney and fixer Michael Cohen claimed that there was a separate meeting; this one, involving five people, including Cohen himself. According to Giuliani, three of the five people in that supposed meeting told him “it didn’t take place.” Not only that, they had done so “under oath on it and the other two couldn’t possibly reveal it because [Special Counsel Robert] Mueller never asked us about it.” …
To numerous observers, this was incredibly confusing and potentially damaging. There had never been reports of a planning meeting. And the Trump team had long insisted that the actual meeting itself was so innocent and irrelevant as to barely even register in their memories—which likely would not have been the case if they had been planning for it…
Giuliani told The Daily Beast that this included reporters from The New York Times, such as the paper’s star Trump reporter Maggie Haberman, who had reached out about the alleged pre-meeting meeting. So, he added, “Jay [Sekulow] and I spent a great deal of [Sunday] trying to run it down.”…
So… fearing a NYT story, Giuliani talked to five witnesses about the testimony they gave to Mueller, determined there was nothing to it, but nonetheless went on TV to preemptively defeat this non-story, then admitted to a reporter he talked to witnesses about their testimony? pic.twitter.com/4BWnpVCRmH
— Max Kennerly (@MaxKennerly) July 31, 2018
If Giuliani and Sekulow get tagged for witness tampering because Rudy was trying to fend off an incremental NYT story, we should throw a parade on Broadway.
— southpaw (@nycsouthpaw) July 31, 2018
Tuesday Morning Open Thread: DumbfellasPost + Comments (176)